Poet Mahmoud Darwish Has Died

Ugh. I just learned from Theriomorph in comments that Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish has also passed on. Theriomorph is right. This has been a bad weekend for art.

RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) – Mahmoud Darwish, whose poetry encapsulated the Palestinian cause, will get the equivalent of a state funeral in the West Bank on Tuesday — an honor only previously accorded to PLO leader Yasser Arafat.

Tributes for Darwish poured in on Sunday, a day after the 67-year-old writer died from complications following heart surgery in a U.S. hospital in Houston, Texas.

A poem, “I Belong There”, from the Academy of American Poets. Translated by Carolyn Forché and Munir Akash.

I belong there. I have many memories. I was born as everyone is born.

I have a mother, a house with many windows, brothers, friends, and a prison cell

with a chilly window! I have a wave snatched by seagulls, a panorama of my own.

I have a saturated meadow. In the deep horizon of my word, I have a moon,

a bird’s sustenance, and an immortal olive tree.

I have lived on the land long before swords turned man into prey.

I belong there. When heaven mourns for her mother, I return heaven to

her mother.

And I cry so that a returning cloud might carry my tears.

To break the rules, I have learned all the words needed for a trial by blood.

I have learned and dismantled all the words in order to draw from them a

single word: Home.

May you rest in peace, Mr. Darwish.